


Missed Connections

by morgaine2005



Series: Take Me Home and Related Tales [3]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 5+1 Fic, F/M, Globe Theatre, Implied/Referenced Violence, London, Los Angeles, M/M, Minor Violence, Other, References to Hamlet, Upstate New York, Versailles - Freeform, author did a surprising amount of research
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26096026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morgaine2005/pseuds/morgaine2005
Summary: In thousands of years of living, you're bound to run into the parents who gave you up at least a couple of times ... even if you don't understand that's what you're doing.Or, five times Ariadne almost got a clue about the identity of her parents, and one time she didn't need one.
Relationships: Ariadne/Dionysus (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Take Me Home and Related Tales [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1857055
Comments: 98
Kudos: 39





	1. Something Rotten

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, first things first: this story will make _no sense whatsoever_ if you haven't read [Take Me Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24331921/chapters/58666987). If you're not willing to take on a 225K+ behemoth of a story just to understand this little fic, you can get all the context you need for the first 5 chapters of this one by reading the first two scenes of the first chapter of Take Me Home. But Chapter 6 contains some major ending spoilers, so You Have Been Warned.
> 
> (You could always just hit the back button. I won't judge!)
> 
> More importantly, this fic would not exist without my amazing betas: [andavri](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andavri/pseuds/andavri), [AnnUsual](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnUsual/pseuds/AnnUsual), and [Kat_Rowe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kat_Rowe/pseuds/Kat_Rowe). Much love to all the amazing folks at the [Ace Omens](https://discord.com/channels/606085415174144040/606091582122360832) Discord server, too! Thank you SO MUCH, my lovelies!
> 
> I did ... a fair amount of research for this fic, but take anything historical you see with a grain of salt, because I am not above saying "screw the facts, this is how I want it to be for the story."
> 
> Finally, this story is completely written, so barring any unfortunate accidents, I will be updating daily until it's done.

_Circa 1601 A.D._

_Globe Theatre, London_

“I just don’t get it,” Dionysus said. He leaned back in his seat, one boot resting against the rail that separated anyone sitting in the gallery from a quick plunge into the pit. “How did _Hamlet_ become a hit?”

Ariadne looked around – at the packed yard, at the packed galleries, at Juliet and the other hawkers who could barely make their way through the crowds to sell their hazelnuts and oranges and grapes. The show hadn’t even started yet, and they’d progressed well past “standing room only” to “packed in like sardines.”

Speaking of grapes, she popped one into her mouth (she had been lucky to get Juliet’s attention when she had) and shrugged. “It is a work of genius.”

“Well, yes, obviously.” Dionysus shifted in his seat, rolling his shoulders to relieve an itch he couldn’t scratch. This century’s clothes – the starched collars, the heavy brocades, all the _layers_ – did not agree with him, but good luck getting him to admit that. “But it was a work of genius when we saw Will’s scripts, and it was a work of genius six weeks ago, and six weeks ago you could have played a full tennis match in the pit and hit no one. Well, maybe of the actors, if your aim was bad and the ball went onto the stage.”

That was quite true, and Ariadne knew it was true because she had been there. “Maybe it just took a while to find its audience?”

That _wasn’t_ true, and Ariadne knew that as well – and what was more, Dionysus knew she knew it. He raised an eyebrow and let the moment pass without comment.

Well, almost without comment. “Is there a reason why you’re hogging all the grapes?”

“They’re very good grapes,” Ariadne replied, popping another into her mouth and daring him to do anything about it.

Dionysus smirked and tensed, like a cat about to pounce.

Ariadne smiled in reply and held the grapes away from him. “Manifest your own! I bought these.”

That bit was in Greek. With so many mortals about, it wouldn’t do to say anything quite so telling. Mortals in these parts still had an unfortunate habit of gruesomely murdering those they considered to be “witches,” and while she and Dionysus could certainly give any mortal mob or judicial system the slip, they’d probably have to flee the country in the process, and that would be a shame. Despite the weather, Ariadne rather liked it in England.

Dionysus liked it, too. The pubs were great fun (except for a certain one in Deptford he was _still_ sore about, almost a decade later), and the playwrights had been brilliant even before he started actively meddling. Ariadne was hoping they could stay for at least a century or two.

Dionysus’s sigh brought her out of her reverie. “If you insist …” He ducked in for a kiss. Ariadne allowed it.

And bit back a yelp when she felt a tug on the grapes in her hand. “Dionysus!”

He leaned back with a grin, tossing the grape into his mouth. “They’re _very_ good grapes,” was all he said.

Ariadne rolled her eyes and shook her head. And ate another grape.

There was a stir onstage, and Ariadne turned to look. An actor dressed in a helmet and breastplate had come out and proceeded to stand at attention. A second soon followed, also in a breastplate and helmet, and said, “Who’s there?”

The first line was enough to quiet some of the audience, but not all. Ariadne settled back to watch.

Or she tried to. But she could neither settle nor watch – and not only because the first few minutes of the play were spent dithering and dropping exposition to give the audience a few minutes to quiet down. Dionysus was right; there was something very strange about _Hamlet’s_ meteoric explosion in popularity. Yes, it was genius, but _genius_ was not the same as _popular_. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men would only play to an empty theater for so long before swapping out _Hamlet_ for another part of the repertory, certainly not long enough for word-of-mouth alone to be responsible for the packed playhouse.

And there was … something else. A taste in the air, a subtle scent on the breeze. A sense that _something_ not quite mortal was behind the sudden popularity of a very long play about a very indecisive prince.

Marcellus had not yet had a chance to declare that something was rotten in the state of Denmark, but Ariadne thoroughly agreed with the sentiment anyway.

There was some influence at work, subtle and slippery. The taste of it was vaguely Abrahamic in nature, but it didn’t feel like any angel’s working she’d ever stumbled across, all cold holiness and smarmy self-righteousness. Or any demon’s, all burning hurt and casual cruelty. It felt more like mischief (which couldn’t possibly be right; she’d yet to see any evidence of a sense of humor or mischief in a single Abrahamic divinity) and was subtly flavored with … with …

Ariadne sighed and leaned back. She couldn’t get a good read on it. She’d thought that coming here would help, but there were too many mortals around. Their emotions and stray thoughts cluttered up the space and made it all but impossible to pin anything down.

Maybe that was why her eyes started to stray through the crowd instead of focusing on the stage. Perhaps, if she couldn’t sense what was going on, she’d be able to see it …

It was the cap that drew her attention first – the tall, black _capotain_ with its rounded crown. Ariadne had only seen caps like that on Puritans, and to see a Puritan in a playhouse was quite a bit less common than catching a glimpse of a bishop in a bawd’s house. So of course she took a closer look.

It – or, well, _she_ – really _did_ look like a Puritan. Nobody else wore clothing that managed to combine that level of quality with that uninspired a selection of colors to a playhouse. And more importantly, nobody else would be that jumpy – gaze constantly darting around the pit and what parts of the galleries that she could see, instead of watching the stage like a reasonable person.[1] Like she was looking for someone she knew, or more likely, looking to make sure she didn’t see anyone she knew. Puritans, after all, were not kind to those who stepped off the steep and thorny way to heaven.[2]

Then the woman saw – something. Something that made her lean on the arm of the man she was standing with and turn a softly imploring gaze up at him. She patted the small swell in the front of her gown and nodded to one of the hawkers, a, “father of my child, please get this parasite something to eat” gesture if Ariadne ever saw one. And the man—

Ariadne’s eyes went wide.

_That_ was no mortal man.

The arm the Puritan woman was leaning on belonged to the closest thing Ariadne had to a father-in-law.

Ariadne shifted closer on the bench to Dionysus and squeezed his arm. And then, before he could look up, she whispered in a low, urgent voice, “ _Don’t_ look now.”

She said it in Greek. But not any Greek. Minoan Greek. A dialect that only she and Dionysus spoke with any regularity these days, and one that sometimes Dionysus stumbled through.

But it got the message across. Dionysus’s eyes didn’t leave the stage. “Where am I not supposed to look?” he answered in the same language.

Ariadne dared a glance (after all, _she_ was screwed either way, _she_ could take another look). Zeus had waved down one of the hawkers, and the Puritan was surveying the goodies on offer closely. “To the right.”

Again, Dionysus did not look. But he did nod. “And what am I not looking at?”

“Something that will make your least favorite aunt _very_ upset.”

Dionysus’s eyes widened, and the breath he sucked in was quite a bit more than perfunctory. His _least favorite aunt_ could only be one person, and—well. The less said about _her_ (and how she would react to her husband having yet another affair), the better.

Ariadne said nothing. But she magicked up a bit of extra fabric for her linen cap, the better to hide every last strand of hair. London was once again cosmopolitan enough that an olive-skinned, dark-eyed young man with positively Grecian curls wouldn’t attract too much notice. But her flame-red hair? _That_ was distinctive.

Dionysus’s nostrils flared, and she knew he got her message. He shifted his arm so he was holding his hand out to her. “Let’s go?”

She took it once and squeezed. “Let’s.”

They got up and hurried toward the exit. The other patrons in the gallery grumbled, but Ariadne and Dionysus had been squeezing through crowded agorae, fora, amphitheaters, circuses, marketplaces, innyards, courtyards, great halls, and yes, playhouses, only a skip ahead of trouble, for millennia. In ten seconds, everyone they shoved past or stepped on would forget that they had ever been inconvenienced. Ariadne would make sure of it.

And in the meantime, she and Dionysus had an escape to make.

They held onto each other until they got to the stairwell, and Ariadne was the one who let go. They had two flights of stairs to get down, and this century’s skirts were so heavy and unwieldy that Ariadne needed one hand on the railing and one hand holding up the fabric if she didn’t want to end on the bottom of the stairs in a heap. And she needed to watch her feet, too—

And that was her mistake. Because she wasn’t watching where she was going. She was assuming that nobody else would be on the stairs, not when the play had just begun. And most mortals were quite good at avoiding Ariadne when she didn’t want to be seen or bothered.

So really, it was no one’s fault but her own when she ran straight into a man on the stairs and went sprawling onto her backside.

“Oh! Are you quite all right, my dear?”

Dazed, Ariadne transferred her gaze from the ceiling to the unfortunate victim of her carelessness.

_More money than sense_ was her first impression, or perhaps _clearly not responsible for his own laundry **[3]**_ was a better way of putting it. Nobody who had to wash their own clothes would have thought that wearing an ivory brocade doublet was a good idea. Although it did go well with the hair, a blond so light it was almost white.

Her second impression was _stronger than he looks_ , to judge by the hand that effortlessly grabbed hers and hauled her to her feet. Ariadne didn’t even have a chance to stumble.

And her third impression …

Kind. Kind blue eyes and a kind smile and a kind hand helping her brush herself off and a kind voice saying with absolute conviction of the sort that would brook no argument from the universe at large, “There, no harm done.”

And Ariadne could only goggle, because there was something – something …

“Ari?” Dionysus called, and that snapped Ariadne out of—out of whatever _that_ was.

“Sorry!” she said, and that apology and the smile that went with it would have to stand in for quite a bit. “Gotta run!”

And, as Hamlet would say in a few scenes, she suited the action to the word and ran. She darted down the rest of the stairs and took Dionysus’s proffered hand, and the two of them hurried out of the theater.

It wasn’t until they’d left the great wooden O behind them that Ariadne allowed herself to stop and look back. Because somehow – some way – there was _something_ …

_Did I hit my head?_ she wondered, and felt the back of it. But there was no pain, not even a hint of a knot forming.

“Ariadne?” Dionysus asked, and Ariadne looked up into concerned dark eyes. “Are you all right?”

“I …”

She wondered. She really did. And then she swallowed hard and shook the thoughts out of her head and smiled. “I’m fine,” she said, and meant it. “Really. Just a bit shaken. The only thing hurt is my pride.”

Dionysus looked unconvinced, so Ariadne shook herself and squeezed his hand. “Come on. Let’s make ourselves scarce before your aunt comes looking, no?”

That was enough to make Dionysus shudder and get going. Ariadne stuck close to his side as the two of them disappeared into the crowds of the busy Bankside street. And she didn’t look back, because there would be no point.

But she did wonder.

For a long time, she wondered. 

* * *

[1] Ariadne was studiously not considering what this said about her – although, to be fair, she’d already seen the play. More than once.

[2] It was probably the only way they reliably kept their numbers _on_ the steep and thorny way to heaven.

[3] Not that Ariadne was ever responsible for her own laundry either, at least not in the strictest sense of the term; still, it was the _principle_ of the thing.


	2. La Déesse, C’est Moi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A demon is stalking the halls of Versailles.
> 
> Ariadne only _thinks_ that's her biggest problem.

_Circa 1748 A.D._

_Versailles, France_

There was a demon loose in Versailles.

At least, Ariadne assumed it was a demon. It had an Abrahamic energy, and the eddies and ripples it left its wake – minor pools of chaos, puddles of mortals acting according to their worst impulses, the rats of the palace being found in the strangest places – certainly were not angelic. But all the same, the scent of the magic … wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t the sharp, spiky, painful feel of most demonic magic. There was no real malice or hatred behind it, just mischief.

And something about the feel of it put Ariadne in mind of England. She just wished she could remember what it was – but since she and Dionysus had left England a century beforehand, in the wake of the Long Parliament, _that_ was a losing battle.

So for now, Ariadne would settle for finding this demon and finding out what they were up to.

Her skirts swished around her ankles as she tracked the demon from galleries to gaming rooms, from the Hall of Mirrors to drawing rooms, past the private apartments of the most favored courtiers and near the “secret” staircase that connected the apartments of the king with those of Madame de Pompadour.

Ariadne couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose at finding the demon’s magic so close to _those_ stairs. The Greeks had never been shy about enjoying mortals they might favor, but the interest that the Abrahamic divinities took in the sex lives of mortals … _ugh_. When they weren’t being repressive with a level of prurient interest that would make the most dedicated voyeur blush, they were cajoling mortals into following their libidos straight into disaster. Would it kill them just to let the mortals be?

_Probably,_ Ariadne thought with a ghost of a smile, and she kept following the bursts and leavings of magic.

It wasn’t easy. Versailles was home (of a sort) to thousands of mortals, many of them with stronger desires, appetites, and wills than most. They had to, to be mortal and survive in the gilded cage that the kings of France had created to trap their nobles.[1] It left Versailles awash in a cloying psychic miasma that managed to be the perfect complement to perfume-washed bodies and lack of privies while at the same time thoroughly turning the stomach.

That was probably why it had taken so long for Ariadne to sense the demon in the first place. The demon might have been there for days, or weeks – though probably not months. There wasn’t a demon or angel subtle enough to evade her detection for months.

For that matter, if a demon or angel were bold enough to hang around for months, they would have probably caught the attention of at least one of Versailles’s two gods in residence. And if that had happened, Ariadne would know about it.

The trail led Ariadne to a side door leading out to the gardens. She paused and rubbed her nose, before looking right and left and magicking herself up a parasol.[2] The few courtiers who were hanging about this unused and unpopular side door didn’t notice.

Ariadne slipped through the door[3] and onto the grounds.

She rested her parasol on her shoulder and closed her eyes, breathing deeply and trying to catch the taste of demonic magic. As she did so, she hoped, vaguely, that whatever this demon was up to, it wasn’t going to make trouble on the scale of the Affair of the Poisons. Ariadne thought that everyone involved had been mortal, but the sheer volume of murder and destruction that scandal left in its wake would have certainly impressed a demon for scale.

Although – that led to an interesting question, didn’t it? Ariadne could see why angels came to Versailles; many of the people here managed to make outward piety one of their top three hobbies (the other two generally being some combination of hunting, fashion, gambling, drinking, feasting, or extramarital affairs). The angels must have seen Versailles as fertile ground for conversions, a bevy of “sinners” just waiting to be turned into “saints.” The last Abrahamic interference with Versailles had been an angel who lasted three whole months before Dionysus unceremoniously sent him packing.[4]

But why demons? Anyone with half a brain could see that the mortals here were treading the primrose path of dalliance without any outside interference. The sensible thing would be to leave them to it and focus on areas where mortals needed some actual help getting into “sin” …

“Madame de Lavigne! What a _surprise_ to see you out here!”

The voice blew Ariadne’s woolgathering away like a puff of smoke. Her eyes went wide, and she turned.

The woman-shaped being who stood before her was known to mortals in this place as Madame du Coeur. She held a rank of countess, although there was no county “du Coeur” on any known map of France. And while her wit and vivacity were enough to slay nearly any mortal with the force of her charm, she would never find her way into letters and diaries, account-books or – later – histories. For these days, when the Greek gods chose to walk among mortals, they had perforce to be discreet.

Admittedly, discretion had never been Aphrodite’s strong suit, but this many centuries after the Abrahamics and their strange carpenter/cannibal/condemned criminal of a god had forced them off their perch, she was making it work.

“Madame du Coeur,” Ariadne said, bowing her head and dipping into the curtsey the etiquette of Versailles demanded from one of her “rank” to one of Aphrodite’s.[5] “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Courtesy thus paid, Ariadne dared a glance at the rest of Aphrodite’s entourage, except—

She didn’t have one. Ariadne’s eyes slowly arched upward. That was … new …

“Walk with me?” Aphrodite said, with a smile that said _come hither_ and eyes that glittered more like daggers than diamonds. Sharp, poisoned daggers.

“I—” Ariadne started, and got no further than that, because Aphrodite hooked her arm through Ariadne’s elbow – the combined width of Aphrodite’s paniers and Ariadne’s be damned – and all but dragged her off.

“It’s been so long since we had a chat,” Aphrodite said, walking at a fast-enough clip that Ariadne all but had to jog to keep up – all while still managing the glide-walk that the ladies of Versailles had made famous. “A true – dare I say it? – heart-to-heart. Don’t you agree?”

“Erm—” was all Ariadne was able to say before being cut off.

“Although, really, Madame, even if I _have_ been neglecting you most sadly …” Aphrodite tossed her a smile that showed far too many teeth, putting her bright tone to shame. “Did you truly believe I wouldn’t notice?”

“Notice … what?” Ariadne asked.

Aphrodite frowned[6] and lightly smacked Ariadne on the nose with her fan. Like she was a dog that had just made a mess on the parquet floors. “Don’t be coy, _ma chérie_ ; it doesn’t suit you.”

There was absolutely no answer Ariadne could make to that that wouldn’t be inviting another smack, so Ariadne kept quiet.

Aphrodite watched her face closely, eyes narrowed, before turning away with a huff, some of the friendly demeanor melting away. “Madame de Corbeau was not at _all_ subtle, I will have you know. Made a proper spectacle of herself at the gaming tables. _And_ decided to cozy up to Madame de Pompadour.”

“Did she now,” Ariadne said in the flattest tone she could manage, because Aphrodite seemed to expect some response and that was the only one she could think to make.

“ _Ma chérie_ ,” and here Aphrodite brooked no argument, “you know I will not tolerate interference with my particular favorites.”

Ariadne’s mouth opened – and just as swiftly shut again. She’d heard the rumors, everyone in Versailles had, that while the Madame de Pompadour had captivated the king’s heart, things in the bedroom between them were … not always ideal. If those rumors were true, it would explain why Aphrodite was jumping off the deep end at the thought of someone else interfering with her precious Madame de Pompadour.

Wait—that _demon_ had also been sniffing around Madame de Pompadour, if the presence Ariadne had sensed near the marquise’s apartments was any indication …

“So this Madame de Corbeau—” Ariadne started.

A glare from Aphrodite swiftly silenced her – though Ariadne sensed it wouldn’t matter much. Not with the face she made right after. “Yes, well, as I was saying. _Not_ subtle. I’ve never seen someone not in mourning wear so much black. And sunglasses – indoors! _And_.”

Now the full force of Aphrodite’s glare turned onto Ariadne.

Ariadne could only return it with a blank stare.

“Her _hair_.”

Was there something that Ariadne was supposed to get from that? Her confusion must have shown on her face, for Aphrodite sighed.

Then she reached out, grabbed the lone curl that spilled over Ariadne’s shoulder, and rubbed it until the powder had crumbled to Ariadne’s dress and her natural hair color shone through.

“I have seen,” Aphrodite said slowly, “hair the color of Madame de Corbeau’s on precisely _one_ other person at Versailles. And she is standing right in front of me now.”

_Wait, what? Madame de Corbeau had red hair like mine? What does that—_

_Oh._

_OH._

If Madame de Corbeau happened to be the demon she’d been following—

_That BITCH!_

A flash of white-hot anger bloomed in her chest—and died, because now that Madame de Corbeau had dropped Ariadne in it with Aphrodite, she didn’t exactly have time to be angry. Grudgingly admiring, maybe, but angry? No.

“And—and what is Madame de Corbeau up to now?” Ariadne asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

“Oh, don’t you worry about _her_ , _ma petite_ ,” Aphrodite replied. “Do you know, I think she might have been a bit of a sensitive? Because she took one look at me and fairly slithered off.” Now Aphrodite smirked. “And I shall be having a word with the king. We will not be seeing _her_ face around here anytime soon.”

Well, that solved one problem, although if Aphrodite was still going to blame Madame de Corbeau’s hair color on Ariadne, the presence of a demon in Versailles was quite possibly the _least_ of her problems.

“But let me make one thing clear,” Aphrodite said—and then, in a move that made Ariadne’s head spin, whirled her around, thrust her against the hedge, and pinned her in place with her glare as much as with the iron grip she had on her shoulder.

“Versailles,” Aphrodite said in a low, frothing hiss, “has one queen, and that is Marie Leszczyńska. It has one _maîtresse-en-titre_ , and that is Madame de Pompadour. And it has _one_ goddess, and that is _me_. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ariadne said, nodding rapidly and trying to disappear into the hedge.

But Aphrodite wasn’t done yet. “ _I_ will set the trends here. The mortals will follow where _I_ lead. And that means that powder and wigs will not go out of fashion until _I_ say so, and when they do, the favored hair color will _not_ be red. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Aphrodite’s eyes narrowed and she looked Ariadne up and down slowly, calculatingly. She took a deep breath.

And then, just as suddenly as she had grabbed Ariadne, she let go. Ariadne slumped down as far as her stays would allow.

“Good,” Aphrodite said. “We will not have this conversation again.”

“No, ma’am,” Ariadne agreed as deferentially as she could.

“ _Parfait_. Have a pleasant day, Madame de Lavigne.” And with a sharp-toothed smile and a snap of her fan, Aphrodite resumed her leisurely stroll.

Leaving Ariadne still backed up against the hedge, literally and metaphorically catching her breath.

She’d give it to this Madame de Corbeau – she was a clever demon. Aphrodite, the goddess who had let a city be sacked just so she could have an apple, would take one look at the audacity of that red hair in a sea of powder and wigs and wouldn’t bother to look past it. So as long as the demon avoided being pulverized in the initial temper tantrum, she’d be free to work with impunity until she couldn’t, and then make her escape while Aphrodite blamed Ariadne for everything.

And then Ariadne frowned.

If that was the demon’s scheme … then that meant that the demon in question had an unsettlingly good idea of exactly what went on at Versailles. Usually the Abrahamics were not so well-informed. And most of them, Ariadne was sure, wouldn’t know _her_ from a hole in the ground.

But if this demon knew better …

Ariadne shuddered.

Perhaps it would be better to let the court slide further into decadence without her and Dionysus for a time. A decade or two in Paris would surely do them a world of good. And giving Aphrodite some time to cool off and enjoy queening around as the undisputed goddess of Versailles would do Ariadne even _more_ good.

Nodding to herself, Ariadne snapped her clothes back into presentability and turned her steps back toward the palace.

It was time to make a change. 

* * *

[1] Well, one king, Louis XIV. Louis XV had been on the throne for over thirty years, but it was quite clear that he’d never have the stature of his great-grandfather.

[2] Technically summoning the parasol to her from where she’d left it in her apartments, but who was counting?

[3] She had to turn sideways, because of her skirt, but that was only a minor inconvenience.

[4] The angel in question had come in the guise of a devout and charismatic – sort of – priest. He’d lasted until Easter. That was when Dionysus sanctified all the communion wine according to _his_ rites, and the ensuing week of debauchery had put many an actual bacchanalia to shame.

[5] Dionysus and Aphrodite were equals as far as Greek gods went, both being of the Twelve, but since Ariadne wasn’t anywhere on their level and since Aphrodite was … herself, it was just easier for Ariadne and Dionysus to assume lower-ranked mortal guises.

[6] On anyone else it would have been a scowl, but Aphrodite didn’t _do_ scowls, so a frown it would have to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made the mistake of watching the first two seasons of _Versailles_ a few months/a year or so back and going on a slight research binge. And this is the result. You're welcome?
> 
> (Also, if you know where I can watch the third season legally and for free, I will be very grateful if you tell me.)


	3. The Same Eyes in Different People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In New York's Burned-Over District, Ariadne and Dionysus encounter an angel. Luckily for them, it turns out that angels are as susceptible to the sins of the vine as anyone else.

_Circa 1850 A.D._

_Burned-Over District, New York_

Bailey had been arguing with the representatives of the po-dunk town which they found themselves outside of for nearly an hour. The animals – from the oxen pulling the wagons to the horses, elephants, camels, and other exotic fauna that made up the circus – were getting restless.

So was Dionysus. And as far as Ariadne was concerned, that was worse.

“Now, see here, gentlemen,” Bailey was saying in that conciliatory, jovial tone he’d been using since they first pulled the wagons to a stop. It hadn’t done him much good an hour ago, and to judge by the stony faces of the men before him, it wasn’t doing much good now. “You know our show. This is good, clean, family entertainment. Nothing objectionable in a few clowns and some elephants, is there? Some trick-riding? We’re not like those _other_ circuses—”

“Tain’t Christian!” shouted one of the men standing in the back, his long gray beard and flopping hat quivering. And the other men nodded.

Dionysus sighed and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. Ariadne glanced sidelong at him, her hands tightening on the reins.[1] “You would think,” he said, “that the revival would have the common courtesy to wait until after we’d performed to come to town.”

Ariadne supposed she should count it as lucky that Dionysus spoke in Greek.[2] But she glared at him anyway.

He took the glare for encouragement. “After all, we entertainers have to look out for each other, no? And it would be so much more profitable for them. We get the folks to sin; they help them to repent. A virtuous cycle, you might say.”

Ariadne took a deep breath, theatrically rolled her eyes, and raised an eyebrow at him. Dionysus grinned back, completely unrepentant.

His grin didn’t last for long. As Bailey tried another argument, Dionysus sighed. “Although, speaking of entertainment … I am in no way entertained.”

Ariadne rested one hand on Dionysus’s arm. “Dionysus.”

“Relax, sweetheart. I won’t get us run out on a rail. If these fellows show us any cheek …” His eyes sparked with amusement and for a split-second flashed burgundy. And he loosed some of the control he had over his Presence, flooding the area with a sense of just who had come to pay a visit. “Well, I’ll just show them who the real ringmaster of the wilder parts of our show is.”

Ariadne’s eyes went wide, and she sucked in air. “ _Dionysus_!”

“Wish me luck.” And in spite of – or more accurately, because of – their straight-laced audience, he leaned in to give her a quick peck on the lips before hopping down from the wagon and loping toward Bailey with a stride that was more feline than human.

_Great_ , Ariadne thought, burying her head in her hands. _Just great._ America brought out the wild side of Dionysus at the best of times. Add in some Americans who put him – who put _both_ of them – in mind of the Puritans who’d driven them from England two hundred years ago,[3] and they’d be lucky if a stampede was the worst he unleashed before they got out of here.

But Ariadne couldn’t stay with her head buried in her hands for long. Someone had to keep an eye on Dionysus and pull his fat out of the fire, and since everyone else around here was mortal, that left Ariadne. She looked up.

Dionysus had just come to a stop beside Bailey, who was not a good enough showman to hide his alarm. That was par for the course for Bailey, though, so Ariadne barely noticed it.

No. What she noticed was the _other_ figure who stiffened when Dionysus came closer. A figure who stood stock-still, not even breathing, and not daring to look away from Dionysus.

This man had been standing near the back of the little group of townsfolk, notable only for his beige coat and light gray trousers. Two shades far too light to be practical in a sleepy country town like this. Compared to the clothes, his hair – almost as dark as Dionysus’s – stuck out like a sore thumb. Ariadne couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t noticed him before, for that reason if for nothing else.

Unless, of course, he hadn’t _wanted_ her to notice …

“Gentlemen,” Dionysus was saying, “I’m sure we can come to an agreement like reasonable people,” and Ariadne paid no attention to whatever inflammatory thing he was about to say beyond that, because—yes, the man-shaped being in the beige coat had gone far too long without breathing. His eyes were transfixed on Dionysus in a way no human would ever manage.

Ariadne narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. It was hard to sense much of anything around Dionysus’s Presence – to say nothing of everyone else in the circus – but what had Ariadne been doing for hundreds, thousands of years, if not sensing things around Dionysus’s Presence? Good Gaia, she’d once tracked a demon through Versailles while batting away Dionysus’s Presence _and_ Aphrodite’s!

So if she concentrated, let Dionysus’s wine-red power wash over her and just as quickly wash away, if she reached outward with every sense that she had …

_There._ The power that came from the man-shaped being was cold and clean, like crisp mountain air, and as pitiless as a blizzard. Sharp, too, like a surgeon’s bone-saw ruthlessly removing the diseased limb.[4] And this power was tinged with something else, too, something acrid-smelling and fluttering away when Ariadne tried to get a closer look—

_Fear._

Ariadne looked quickly to Dionysus, who was standing in that casual, carefree way that told those who knew him well that he was about two seconds from turning everyone in the circus into a fully-fledged Maenad and letting them indulge every one of their most bloodthirsty instincts.[5]

And with a literal angel standing right in front of them, that could be disastrous.

Ariadne hopped down from the wagon and hurried over to Dionysus and Bailey. “Gentlemen,” she said, slipping an arm through Dionysus’s before he could fly off the handle.

Dionysus looked down at her in some surprise, but Bailey breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Missus B.!”

“Missus?” asked the lead townsman, shooting a narrow, suspicious glare at Ariadne.

Ariadne didn’t roll her eyes, but since she had no desire to be treated as subhuman today, she brought her left hand up just enough to let the light catch on her ring.[6] “Gentlemen,” she said again, “I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere if we keep arguing in circles. I suggest a compromise.”

“Now look here, ma’am,” the lead townsman said, “I don’t think this is any sort of discussion for the likes of a pretty little lady like you. Why don’t you go on back to the wagon and leave this to the menfolk?”

Ariadne glared, mostly for the look of the thing, but inside she could have cheered – because if _anything_ was going to get Dionysus’s back up and ensure he listened to what she had to say, it was this.

And get Dionysus’s back up it did. Dionysus stiffened, and if he’d been in a shade more feline of a form, every strand of hair he had would have been standing on end. “We _listen_ to Ariadne,” he said, just enough Power threading into his voice to make every mortal stand at attention.

As for the man-shaped being in the beige coat, he looked rather faint.

“Yes,” Bailey said, unnecessarily, into the sudden silence that surrounded Dionysus’s pronouncement. “That’s right. We do. Missus B. is a sensible lady, so we—”

“Thank you, Mr. Bailey,” Ariadne said, and lightly squeezed Dionysus’s arm. “Gentlemen, it’s getting late, and even if you were to convince us to take our business elsewhere, we’re simply not going to get elsewhere else before night falls. Why don’t we all take a break and talk again in the morning? We can camp outside of town and chat when we’re all better rested.

“After all,” Ariadne said, holding Dionysus’s arm closer to herself and letting her gaze slip from the lead townsman to the man-shaped being in the back, “this is a wild country, isn’t it? Lots of strange animals around. You _surely_ wouldn’t want them to attack any vulnerable people, would you?”

She let that sentence stand long enough for the man-shaped being to go rather pale before turning back to the lead townsman with a sunny smile. “Like us, of course.”

A lie, and at least two people – Dionysus and the man-shaped being – would know it. But the lead townsman looked confused; Dionysus had an eyebrow raised at her but was playing along, and the man-shaped being …

Spoke. “I think that the—the lady is right, Mr. Jones,” said the man-shaped being. “We—we certainly can’t deny these folks the right to rest near town overnight. It—think of Christian charity!”

Ariadne wasn’t sure what was particularly Christian about forcing people to camp in wagons under the stars when there were plenty of nice, warm houses nearby, but she’d long ago given up trying to understand these people’s views of _xenia_. Besides, she had more important things to worry about.

Like the lead townsman, frowning at the man-shaped being. “Well, if you say so, Reverend.” He turned back to them. “You all can camp out here for the night, and we’ll talk in the morning. But,” he finished in a tone that brooked no argument, “don’t think we’ll change our minds.”

And with that, he nodded once and led the little delegation back to the town – the “Reverend” bringing up the rear.

“Missus B.—” Bailey started, at the same time Dionysus said, “Ari?”

She didn’t answer either of them. Not directly. “Well! That’s all settled – come on, honey, we need to get set up for the night if we want to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come morning.” And with that she tugged Dionysus by the arm and dragged him away.

“Ari,” Dionysus tried again, stumbling in her wake.

“The one in the beige coat wasn’t mortal,” Ariadne said quickly in Greek.

Dionysus’s eyes went wide.

“I think he’s a—” And she paused. The word she wanted in Greek was far too close to the one in English. “ _Messenger_ ,” she said pointedly, in English, raising both eyebrows slightly.

Dionysus sucked in a gasp, because he understood what she meant. The Abrahamics had, after all, taken a great deal from them – starting with language, which they had bastardized to serve their own ends.

“A messenger, huh?” he said slowly, looking over his shoulder at the retreating backs of the townsmen and the not-a-townsman. “Well, well, well. Ariadne, I think I have a sudden urge to pay this _messenger_ a visit this evening. Care to join me?”

And Ariadne smiled.

“Oh, darling – I thought you’d never ask.”

* * *

Some hours later, when full dark had fallen and the good[7] people of the town were snug in their beds – and, for that matter, the other circus performers and animals were snuggly bedded down, too – Dionysus and Ariadne snuck into town.

It didn’t take them long to find the “Reverend’s” house. Churches were pretty darn conspicuous in these parts, even in the dark, and the “Reverend” didn’t live too far from it. Even if he had, the cold, clean scent of angelic magic would have pointed the way to the fellow’s house as clearly as any beacon. Especially since Dionysus was kind enough to tamp down on his Prescence[8] so Ariadne could follow the trail.

“This is the place?” Dionysus asked, looking upward at the snug, well-built house. Ariadne wondered if their angel had built it himself or bought it off someone else – or if he’d simply willed it into being when he needed it. Angels and demons had limited power compared to the gods, but Ariadne had never quite determined what those limits were.

“Mmm-hmm,” Ariadne said.

“Well, then.” And Dionysus knocked on the door – three sharp raps that rang through the little town like thunderclaps.

They should have woken everyone on the street. They _could_ have woken the dead. But no window-sashes flew up, no doors flew open. Not a mouse stirred.

An angel, however, crept to his door and slowly pulled it open. “Who—who’s—” he started. And, when the light from the door fell on them, choked.

If he’d had a few more seconds to slam the door in their faces, he probably would have. Which was why Dionysus threw his arm in the way. “Greetings, old friend,” he said in Greek – and not just any Greek, Koine Greek, the language the Abrahamics had nicked to write what one could call their first international bestseller. “We are but weary travelers seeking a place to rest our heads for the night. Could you, perhaps, offer us hospitality?”

“And we come with a present,” Ariadne said, lifting a bottle of wine they had been saving for a special occasion.[9] “As repayment for your generosity.”

The angel answered in English. “B-beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”

“Oh, will you listen to that, Ari?” Dionysus asked, switching to English. “The messenger here knows his Virgil. Tell me, my friend, do you happen to know your Ovid as well? The story of Baucis and Philemon, in particular?”

“B-Baucis and—” The angel choked. “You c-can’t turn me into a tree!”

“Oh, is that a _challenge_?” Dionysus asked, but Ariadne put a hand on his arm (as they both knew she would) before Dionysus could determine just how challenging that would be.

“That’s the ending,” Ariadne said. “We’re more concerned with the bit in the middle. Where Zeus and Hermes flood the entire town because most of the citizens denied them _xenia_.”

If it were possible, the angel went even whiter. “You—you c-c-can’t—” he started. But he didn’t go on. Ariadne could practically see the mental gears turning as the angel calculated the distance to the nearest large body of water, the air pressure, the humidity.

“Flood the whole town? Well, that _would_ be a challenge, a real one. And Father would not be pleased if I trespassed into his domain to teach an upstart Abrahamic a lesson. But, you know, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, as the mortals say. Turning the entire town into moose would accomplish much the same thing without stepping on anyone’s toes.”

“But we’d prefer not to have to do that,” Ariadne said before the angel could faint. “For we are but humble entertainers, you see. And what we most want …”

“Is to get paid,” Dionysus said. “And moose generally aren’t much good for that.”

“Paid?” the angel asked. “If—if that’s all you want—I could—well, it would just be a small miracle—”

“Ah, not so fast,” Dionysus said. “Legal tender is nice, but it’s not the be-all end-all. Not for a performer.”

“Eh?”

“‘But release me from my bands with the help of your good hands,’” Ariadne quoted helpfully.

When the angel looked blank, Dionysus sighed. “Applause. We want applause.”

“Oh … er …”

“But right now, we just want to talk,” Ariadne said. “And think of it like this – if you let us in, then we’ll be bound by _xenia_ as well as you. And a good guest never threatens their host.”

“Or you could leave us on the doorstep and have fun ministering to cervids for however long you’re expected to stay in the general area,” Dionysus said. “Your call.”

The angel stared at Dionysus, then Ariadne. And then Dionysus again.

Finally, he gulped and opened the door. “Then—then I suppose you’d best come in.”

* * *

Good wine, Ariadne knew, could do many things. Warm the heart, warm the soul. Warm the body, sort of. Help a person relax. Drown sorrows. Loosen tongues.

In the case of the angel – who, even this late into the evening, hadn’t told them his actual name, only his human alias, “Ezekiel Harold” – it was loosening a lot more than that. The prim, schoolmarmish posture he’d started the evening with was gone, replaced by a giggly mass that was one guffaw away from slipping right out of his chair. His gestures grew more expansive, his voice and laugh louder. He’d even loosened his tie.

And he’d lost whatever control he might have thought he had over the situation. Now he was holding his sixth glass of wine up above his head, watching the candlelight play through the ruby depths. “Y’know,” he said, “I haven’t had wine thish— _this_ good since England.”

Ariadne blinked and shot a sideways glance at Dionysus – a _we were going to get him drunk and sloppy, not completely destroy his sanity, what did you DO_ glance. But Dionysus looked just as confused as she felt. He met her eye and shrugged.

“England?” he asked, pouring himself another glass. Dionysus had chosen to match the angel cup for cup, but unlike the angel, Dionysus could hold his liquor.

“Mmm-hmmmm,” the angel sighed, bringing the glass to his nose and attempting to appreciate the bouquet like a true oenophile. He nearly ended up snorting it up his nose, and only a quick gesture from Dionysus kept the wine in the glass where it belonged. “Good wine there. _Besht_ wine I ever had.”

“Funny,” Dionysus said, casually slumping in his chair and stretching his legs. “I didn’t think England was known for its wine.”

“Oh, oh, no. No no no. The wine—the _wine_ wasn’t from England. Notta—not a _chance_. I jusht. I _had_ it in England.” And the angel came to a stop, nodding sagely like he’d dropped some great wisdom.

“Ah,” Dionysus said, nodding in return in a perfect mimicry of the manner of drunks everywhere.

Ariadne took a sip of her own wine to hide her smile.

“An’ _you_!” the angel said suddenly, turning into a mess of scrambling limbs as he tried to sit up straight and point at Ariadne at the same time. “Did I—have I—have I ever told you that you look familiar?”

Ariadne blinked and slowly lowered her glass. “Oh?”

“But not—not like I’d _sheen_ you,” the angel went on, gesturing expansively with the glass. Ariadne glared at the wine in it, telling it firmly that it wasn’t to spill, and it didn’t. “’Cause I’d _remember_ you. That _hair_. An’ your—your— _him_ ,” the angel finished, pointing at Dionysus.

“D’you hear that, Ari?” Dionysus asked. “I’m now your _him_.”

“Hallelujah,” Ariadne replied drily, and the angel’s resulting peals of laughter nearly sent him off the chair. Dionysus actually had to get up and haul the angel back upright.

“Thank’ee—thank ya.” The angel drained his glass (which magically hadn’t spilled) and wordlessly held it out to Dionysus in mute entreaty.

Dionysus smiled and poured. The angel didn’t notice that the bottle didn’t get any emptier. He leaned back in his chair with a smile, heaving a contented sigh.

For a moment, companionable silence reigned.

“But YOU!” the angel said suddenly, pointing savagely at Ariadne, startling her enough that her own wine very nearly spilled.[10] “I’ve sheen your face before! Your _eyes_! Jusht—jusht not on _you_!”

Ariadne could only blink, but Dionysus, who had clearly reached the philosophical portion of the evening, opined, “Well, when you live long enough, sometimes you do see the same eyes in different people.”

The angel sat up and blinked owlishly at him. “Is—izzat from a play?”

“Not yet,” Dionysus replied. “But once I find a good playwright to inspire, it will be.”

“And a good story,” Ariadne pointed out.

“And a good story.”

The angel nodded again, as if he both agreed and understood completely. Ariadne thought the former was possible but had serious doubts about the latter.

As the angel absently toyed with the glass in his hand, Ariadne raised an eyebrow at Dionysus and tilted her head at the angel. _Go, now’s our chance._

Dionysus glanced at the angel, eyes flashing burgundy. Slowly, he nodded in turn. He opened his mouth to speak.

He didn’t get a chance. “I had a friend,” the angel said. “Back in—back in England. When I was there. For a little bit. Well, not _jusht_ in England.”

Ariadne had completely lost the plot on that one, but Dionysus simply said, “Oh?” in his best drunk-encouraging voice.

“My—my _friend_ ,” the angel went on. “I—well. I guesh he wasn’t my friend. Not really. Commandin’ ossifer, more like. Ossified. Ossifier?”

“Officer?” Dionysus supplied.

“ _Yesh_!” the angel said, kicking his legs in glee and pounding on the arm of the chair. “Thassit! Offisher!”

“So your commanding officer was your friend? Back in England?” Dionysus asked.

Ariadne might have shot him a _look_ , a cue to hurry this up already, but nobody dealt with drunks quite like Dionysus, so she took a deep breath, sat back, and let him do his thing.

“Yesh. No. Er. Maybe?” The angel swirled the wine in his glass and frowned down at it, as if it would show him a way out of his quandary. “He wash—he wash _nice_ is the. Is the thing. Gave me wine. Good wine. Like thish!” And he held up his glass, smiling broadly.

“Ah,” Dionysus said, nodding. “So, this friend with the wine was your commanding officer. You were in the army, then?”

“Oh, yesh. The host,” the angel answered.

“Indeed,” Dionysus said, casting a sidelong glance at Ariadne. _Host?_

Ariadne could only shrug.

“Did you fight? In a war?” Dionysus asked.

The angel nodded. And shuddered. Dionysus gestured the angel’s glass full again, and the angel drank deeply.

“What – if you don’t mind me asking – what war did you fight in?”

“The war,” the angel replied.

“Yes, the war. Which one was it?”

“ _The_ war,” the angel repeated.

“You mentioned. I’m trying to figure out _which_ —”

“ _The_ war!” the angel said again, or shouted, really, actually sitting up straight in his agitation and nearly turning his glass upside down. “The _War_! The firsht one! The one alla the angels fought in! The—the only one that mattersh, until the next one!”

“Before our time, then,” Ariadne said quickly, before the angel could get more upset. When Dionysus raised an eyebrow at her, she shrugged. Taking the angel as literally as possible had seemed like the safest course.

“Ooooh. Oh, I shee. Yeah. Yeah, you might—you might notta been around.” The angel nodded, and nodded again, and kept nodding at such a slow and steady pace that Ariadne was almost afraid he’d nod off. Just when she wondered if she might have to tip the angel a little more toward sobriety, he spoke again. “But he wash—he wash a good ossifier. An’ a good friend. In England. Brought me t’shee a play!”

The angel leaned back in his chair, beaming. And Dionysus leaned forward, grinning, eyes as purple as the wine in their glasses.

“Oh?” he asked. “A play, did you say?”

* * *

In the end, the drunk angel wasn’t too hard to bargain with. A trip down memory lane, a few careful lines of argument about the utility of allowing humans to sin in small ways (so they could get it out of their systems while they were still able to repent), and a pledge of a case of the wine Dionysus had shared with him were all it took to get him to promise to talk the townsfolk around and let them show the circus.

And strangely, drunk though he had been, the angel kept his word. And Dionysus kept his. He and Ariadne simply forbore to mention that the case of wine hadn’t actually cost them anything, since Dionysus could materialize bottles and wine out of nothing. (And Ariadne manifested the case.)

The circus was wildly successful, paying handsomely in both applause and the coin of the realm. Within a week, they were rolling out of there with their pockets and hearts far more full than they’d been before they showed up at that half-rate settlement.

And that night – after they’d shaken the dust from that town off their feet and set up camp at a good stopping point on the way to their next destination, Ariadne raised a glass in a silent toast to the angel’s commanding officer. After all, he’d done them a good turn by showing his old private (or whatever the angel was) a good time back in merry old England.

And the best part?

If Ariadne knew angels half as well as she thought she did, that angel would be _furious_ to know that his kindness had been responsible for so many humans succumbing to the grave sin of enjoying themselves for a whole afternoon.

_Be well, mysterious officer,_ Ariadne thought, raising her glass to the stars. _And if you ever find out what was done in your name, may I be there to see it. I'm sure it'll be a laugh._

* * *

[1] As God of Wine, Dionysus had a list of things that he really ought to never touch. Wagon reins were close to the top.

[2] Although not _too_ lucky. For a group of mortals who were about as native to these shores as Ariadne was to the moon, the citizens of these tiny towns sure could get huffy when someone dared to speak a language other than English in their presence.

[3] The fact that those Puritans had been driven out themselves in a couple of decades (because no one likes a killjoy) was at best cold comfort. Especially when one was surrounded by their literal and intellectual descendants.

[4] Or so one hoped. Anyone who had lived as long as Ariadne had had heard their share of horror stories.

[5] Or else turning the entire town into dolphins. With Dionysus, it could go either way.

[6] Which hadn’t existed two seconds prior, but the townsmen didn’t need to know that.

[7] According to some definitions.

[8] Or perhaps not so kind, given that they had no desire to warn their quarry that they were coming.

[9] The bottle, that is. The wine inside had been poured, sipped, spilled down shirts, raised in toasts, quaffed, and on at least one occasion chugged straight from the bottle many times before – and always replenished, because there were benefits to being the God of Wine. And because this was a _very_ special occasion, Dionysus had even re-sealed the bottle.

[10] It didn’t, of course. Ariadne’s wine knew exactly who was boss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Burned-Over District is part of Western and Central New York that saw a ton of religious revivals in the early part of the 1800s. Mormonism got its start there, as did the Millerite churches (who would eventually become the Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, and others). The Shakers were also active in the area. And the Burned-Over District was a hotbed of social activity, including the abolition movement, women's rights movement, and a bunch of utopian social experiments.
> 
> Now, in the TMH offshoot of the GO universe, is it possible that a literal angel being stationed in the area had something to do with all this activity? Sure! 
> 
> Is it also possible that the humans were doing it all themselves and all poor "Ezekiel Harold" was doing was following orders and sending confused report after confused report Upstairs? YOU BETCHA! 
> 
> Which is more likely? 
> 
> Well.
> 
> That's for you to decide.


	4. And Your Little Dog, Too

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ariadne discovers that in Oz, there's far more to fear than cowardly lions, wicked witches, and flying monkeys. A terror stalks that set that even studio executives should pale before.
> 
> Luckily for (almost) everyone involved, Dionysus is scarier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, we have a **mind the tags** warning here for implied/referenced violence and minor violence. If reading that is going to upset you, skip to the notes at the end for the summary of what happens.

_Circa 1939 A.D._

_Culver City, California_

Theater people were superstitious – which made all the sense in the world, when you thought about it. Between the lights, and the costumes, and the rigging, and the sets, and gods above help them all, the _actors_ , theater was always a disaster waiting to happen. And when you performed almost every night (and twice when there was a matinee)? Every person involved knew that each show could be their last, and with every logical safety precaution that could be taken already taken,[1] that left only superstition to keep the inevitable at bay.

Ariadne had been hoping to leave some of the superstition behind when she and Dionysus got into the movies. If for no other reason than that one only had to get a filmed scene right _once_.

_The Wizard of Oz_ , though …

If anything was going to make Ariadne leap headlong into superstition, not just as a way of fitting in amongst the mortals but as a guard against trouble, it was going to be _this_ film.

First there was Buddy Ebsen, spending two weeks in an oxygen tent after the aluminum dust that made up his Tin Man makeup got into his lungs. (He got fired for his trouble. Such was Hollywood.) The lights needed to pull off the Technicolor made the set hotter than the Phlegethon. Margaret Hamilton’s hat and broom caught fire while they were filming her exit from Munchkinland, and she spent several weeks nursing third-degree burns. Nobody was being paid enough, and of the principal cast, only the _dog_ was making less than the putative star of the film. And the less said about what the studio heads were doing to “help” poor little Judy keep up with the grueling pace of film production, the better.

And Ariadne took a deep breath and told herself it was par for the course. This was Hollywood, the bastard child of theater and mortal technology. If it could go wrong, it would. It didn’t even occur to her that something other than bad luck and skinflint studio executives could be behind their spate of misfortune.

Until Betty Danko’s broom caught fire, followed by _Betty_ catching fire.

Sure, anyone could see that stunt was dangerous; that was why Margaret had refused to do it herself, leaving it to the stuntwoman. But Ariadne had _tried_ to keep the universe chugging along in the right direction, to keep a lid on the chaos and the bad luck. And when she failed—maybe it was hubris, but there was a part of her that couldn’t quite believe it.

So she investigated. Got closer to the burned-out broomstick after the fire was out and Betty had been rushed to the hospital. Pushed up her sunglasses[2] to see it better. Let her fingers brush over the charred wood and let her senses—

_Well._

_That_ didn’t smell like smoke.

Ariadne looked over her shoulder, but no one was paying the least bit of attention to her, too focused on the director and the production heads arguing over how to carry on with the filming.[3] She hefted the broomstick, felt it, smelled it, sensed it with more senses than just her usual five. Underneath the smell of charred wood, there was a whiff of …

_Sulfur._

And something else – a touch of magic, spiky and burning with a rage hotter than the fire had been.

Only one type of entity that Ariadne knew of had magic that felt like that.

_Demons_.

She rubbed the bridge of her nose and looked around. Still no one was paying attention to her. The perennial “well, _now_ what?” argument was ongoing. But Ariadne wasn’t terribly concerned about that. She scanned the set, wondering where her other half had gone …

A side door was open. Ariadne took a deep breath and decided not to roll her eyes. Even heat-seeking Dionysus could only stand the lights for so long.

Ariadne kept her grip on the broom (it was toast;[4] no one would miss it), hunched her shoulders, and ducked out the side door before anyone (else) could notice that it was open.

Once she got outside, she flipped her sunglasses back down and extended her senses once again.

_There._ Dionysus had his Presence on a tight leash, but it was leaking out a bit, there in the corner of the backlot where worn-out sets had been dragged. Ariadne hurried over. Absolutely nobody took any notice of her, because, well, why should they? Young women darting to and fro while carrying strange props were a dime a dozen in these parts. The bright lights and glittering stars of Hollywood lured many, even those who never wanted to get in front of a camera.

And really, a burned-out broom wasn’t even the weirdest prop she could be holding. _Had_ held, on more than one occasion.

“ _There_ you are,” Ariadne said, ducking behind an Old West saloon front and finding Dionysus. He was sitting on a crate, smoking. By the smell, it wasn’t tobacco.

He looked up, guilt flashing across his face. “Ari! I—uh—sorry.”

“What for?” Ariadne asked. She gestured one of the cleaner crates closer to Dionysus and took a seat of her own. “It’s not like we’re on the payroll. We can’t get shouted at for taking an unauthorized break when we’re not being paid.”

Dionysus huffed a small laugh. And then huffed a bit of the roll-up he was smoking. He wordlessly held it out to Ariadne; she shook her head.

Dionysus raised one eyebrow and shrugged – his eternal _more for me, then_ gesture. And he rubbed a hand through his curls, turning the usual artful disarray into something that would be more appropriate on the head of Professor Einstein. “This film could be great, you know.”

“I know,” Ariadne replied. She rested a hand on his knee and squeezed gently.

“It’s just—” Dionysus closed his eyes and tugged a curl. “Would it be too much to ask for us to just get it _filmed_?”

Ariadne made a noncommittal noise. And Dionysus sighed. “If anything else goes wrong …”

“Hmm. About that.” Ariadne held the broom out before her.

Dionysus blinked at it like he’d never seen a broom before. “Ari, what—”

“Feel this.”

“Feel—”

“Do I need to sober you up?” she asked, letting a raised eyebrow underline the implicit threat.

Dionysus blinked, shook his head, and took the broom in both hands.

He _hissed_. And not because the broom was still hot.

“This—this is …”

“Yes,” Ariadne said.

“Abrahamic?” Dionysus asked.

“Demon, I’m thinking.”

He swore, in Greek. Quite creatively, too. And only stopped when Ariadne purposefully cleared her throat.

“I don’t think I’d look good with black hair, darling,” was what she said first.

Usually that was enough to chasten Dionysus. Not today. He scowled. “Ari! For the love of—”

“I know.”

“They—” Dionysus looked down at the broom, now trembling in his grasp. The wood in the middle was straining; if Dionysus moved just a bit, he’d have it snapped in half. “How many times have they taken things from us? They conquered the Empire and took all of our believers; they chased us out of England in the seventeenth century; we only _just_ got rid of that gods-awful Prohibition—”

“I know,” Ariadne said softly, rubbing a circle on Dionysus’s knee.

“And Kit! They killed Kit!”

Ariadne leaned closer and made wordless, sympathetic noises. Now was not the time to bring up that poor Kit Marlowe’s unfortunate evening in that Deptford tavern had probably been politically motivated.[5]

“And now they want the _movies_? _Our_ movies?”

Ariadne could only shrug.

Dionysus glared at the broom. Then, with a shout, he threw it like a javelin. It flew as if it had a real witch mounted on it. Ariadne watched its track and quietly nudged the universe to ensure that when it landed – _if_ it landed – it wouldn’t do to some poor soul what Dorothy’s house had done to the Wicked Witch of the East.

She shifted to Dionysus’s crate and leaned her head on his shoulder. Dionysus wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.

For a moment, they sat like that, Ariadne breathing slowly and steadily to coax Dionysus into matching her pace, Dionysus fairly shaking with the anger he was holding back, Ariadne rubbing slow circles on his thigh.

He was tired of losing things to the Abrahamics. So tired. It wasn’t just the believers, although Gaia knew that mortal adulation was a drug to the gods. It was everything else the Abrahamics had taken with them when they took the believers. It was the progress that had stalled. The millions dead in pointless wars that religion might not have _caused_ but that it certainly helped along. The ability for mortals to simply have _fun_ without worrying that their every moment of joy was being tallied up on a ledger somewhere to be used against them when their too-brief lives were over.

And now the Abrahamics wanted to take the movies, too … and if they succeeded in that …

Ariadne worried less about what it would do to the mortals and more about what it would do to Dionysus.

So when Dionysus’s grip eventually loosened and he unbent enough to rest his cheek on her hair, she said, “Can I make a suggestion?”

Dionysus grunted.

“We didn’t fight when the Abrahamics took our believers from us.”

“We didn’t—”

“I know,” she said, silencing him with a finger against his lips. “And we didn’t fight when the Roundheads closed the theaters. And Prohibition …”

Dionysus snorted. “The mortals fought that one themselves.”

“They did,” Ariadne agreed. “But …” She shifted, just enough to look Dionysus in the eye. “Dionysus, do you really think that there’s a demon out there who can best you?”

His jaw fell, and he blinked.

“We’re not fighters. I know that,” Ariadne said. “But sometimes …”

His eyes grew shadowed, dark. He looked away.

“Sometimes,” Ariadne said, once again tracing circles on his thigh, “sometimes there’s no choice but to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.”

Dionysus cocked his head to one side. “Once more unto the breach?”

“‘Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor’d rage,’” Ariadne replied.

Dionysus didn’t reply. Not right away. He kept his eyes trained on the ground before them.

And then? He smiled.

There was something feral in it. And when he looked up, his eyes were a glowing burgundy.

“Then it seems the game’s afoot,” he said. “Come on. Let’s make this demon regret the day they decided to surface in _our_ territory.”

* * *

Trying to track down a demon on a busy set was not as difficult as it might seem. Hollywood had its share of strong personalities, but unlike some other environments,[6] a studio was a transient sort of place. Actors were only locked into their contracts for a few short years; production personnel came and went. And nobody actually _lived_ on the set.[7]

So once Ariadne caught the scent of the demon, it wasn’t hard to trace it back to the source.

As luck would have it, the cameras were once again rolling by the time she and Dionysus found the demon lurking in the woods of Munchkinland. The demon didn’t look terribly threatening – if anything, Ariadne was put in mind of a starving Dickensian orphan with a predilection for black and bowler hats.[8] She—he—they?—Ariadne couldn’t quite determine the gender—had parked themself behind one of the trees, peering out at the actors and the cameras.

What the demon didn’t know was that Ariadne and Dionysus were right behind them.

Ariadne pulled her sunglasses down far enough to catch Dionysus’s eye and raise an eyebrow in a mute, _Shall we?_

Dionysus grinned and flexed his fingers.

Ariadne smirked and quietly cast a small bubble of nothing-to-see-here around them to keep mortals from seeing, hearing, or getting involved in anything they really shouldn’t.[9]

She hadn’t meant that as an opening salvo. But the demon squeaked and jumped. “Who—” They blinked at Ariadne. “Demon Craw—”

They didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because with a gesture, Dionysus turned the papier-mâché vines decking the trees into grape vines. The vines darted out and wrapped around the demon, tying them securely to the tree and a few feet off the ground for good measure.

The demon squawked and started kicking. Ariadne sent a burst of magic into the tree to keep it upright (the prop had _not_ been made for this type of abuse) and sent another burst of magic into the look-anywhere-else bubble.

And Dionysus stepped forward. “Well, well,” he said, smirking and tilting his head in his best stock villain impersonation.[10] “What have we here?”

But the demon still wasn’t looking at Dionysus. They were looking at Ariadne. “You—you’re not Demon Crawly!”

Ariadne blinked, but threw out her initial response[11] for a suave, dry, “Not last I checked, no.”

“B-b-b-but—”

“And,” Dionysus interrupted with a voice that cracked like thunder, “she is not your main problem right now.”

Then Dionysus let his Prescence flood the set.

In that moment, everything took on a faint tinge of unreality, a dreamlike glow that transformed a bare stage into Verona or Elsinore or Agincourt or Rome, greasepaint and canvas into a garden or a town square or a drawing-room, and resin and fabric and more greasepaint and canvas into a place that was decidedly not Kansas anymore. The mortals would feel it – they couldn’t _not_ feel it, bubble or no bubble – and those who were in front of the camera would find their performances more inspired than usual, and those who were behind it would know just what to do to not spoil the moment.

The demon, though. The _demon_ did not look overawed, or transported, or inspired. The demon looked pants-wettingly terrified.[12]

And Dionysus grinned.

“Foul creature,” Dionysus asked, stepping closer, “how did you dare to trade and traffic in hurt and ill-luck on _my_ set?”

“It—it wasn’t my fault!” the demon protested, struggling against the vines.

Dionysus gestured lazily, and the vines tightened. The demon squeaked.

“It w-w-wasn’t my f-f-fault! I was s-s-sent here!”

Ariadne would have asked _by whom?_ , but Ariadne wasn’t the star of this show. Dionysus cocked an eyebrow and let it fall.

“Then when you see him, tell Lucifer—”

“Don’t s-s-say his _name_!” the demon gasped, struggling harder.

“Lucy, then?” Dionysus asked, and the demon sobbed.

Ariadne, however. A prickle of apprehension ran down her spine. Toying with a demon or five or ten or five hundred was one thing; demons were legion but not particularly powerful individually, at least not when compared to Dionysus. Messing with one of the Big Two[13] of the Abrahamic family of faiths was … well, not _suicidal_ , Dionysus was immortal, but certainly inviting a great deal of inconvenience to tea.

So she coughed, once. Dionysus glanced her way. Ariadne raised an eyebrow.

He caught her meaning, narrowed his eyes, and then shrugged. The smirk he tossed to the demon was insouciant and just a little bit smug. “Ariadne thinks I should stop teasing you. You’re lucky I listen to her.”

“Oh, g-g-good, so I can g-g-go—”

The vines constricted, cutting the demon off with a gasp and gurgle.

“Not so fast, my friend,” Dionysus said. “If I’m not teasing you, then I’m simply moving on to the main event.”

It _should_ have been all over for the demon then. None of the Olympians had worked out how to kill a demon – or an angel, for that matter – but their bodies weren’t that much hardier than a mortal’s. Overpower the magic and destroy the body, and the demon or angel was out of your hair for at least a decade or two.

But the demon squealed, “We can make a deal!” and Dionysus paused.

“A … _deal_?” Dionysus asked.

“L-l-look,” the demon said, squirming, “j-j-just—j-j-just let me do the j-j-job I came here for! I j-j-just need to get a human to s-s-sign a contract to s-s-sell his soul to make the m-m-movie successful! And then—then—look, s-s-see, if I _d-d-do_ get the c-c-contract, I can c-c-convince D-D-Duke L-Ligur to let me s-s-stay up here!”

“Isn’t a deal supposed to benefit both parties?” Dionysus asked Ariadne, rhetorically.

“B-b-but that’s it!” the demon squawked. “If _I’m_ up here, then—then they w-w-won’t send anyone else! Los Angeles will be m-m-my territory! Like L-L-London is D-D-Demon Crawly’s!”

“Still not seeing—” Dionysus started.

“Whose soul are you trying to win?” Ariadne asked, because—well. It never hurt to know what an enemy was trying to do.

The demon glanced her way, winced and glanced away again. Then they said a name.

Ariadne and Dionysus exchanged glances.

And burst out laughing.

“ _Him_?” Dionysus asked. “You want to get a contract for _his_ soul?”

“Trust me, you’re wasting your time,” Ariadne laughed. “He’ll get to your duke just fine all on his own.”

“B-b-but that’s the _point_!” the demon whined. “Do you _know_ how evil the humans are around here? They—they s-s-start s-s-sinning all by themselves! If—if Los Angeles is m-m-my territory—I wouldn’t even have to _d-d-do_ anything! I c-c-could just—hang around—and l-l-listen to the g-g-gossip—and write r-r-reports—and the h-humans would do it all themselves! I could g-g-get better numbers than _Demon Crawly’s_ and n-n-not have to _d-d-do_ anything!”

Ariadne had to admit to a faint curiosity about this Demon Crawly, given how often the demon was mentioning him, and in such awestruck, envious tones. But it was very, very faint.

“So we have a permanent demon-in-residence?” Dionysus asked, arms crossed and a skeptical eyebrow raised. “Again. What exactly is in this for us?”

“N-n-no other demons in t-t-town, mucking things up!” the demon stammered. “J-j-just me! Not d-d-doing anything!”

“Ah,” Dionysus said, nodding slowly. To someone who didn’t know him well, he was clearly taking this under consideration. To someone who _did_ know him well …

The way he arched an eyebrow at Ariadne said everything that needed to be said. “Well, sweetheart? What do you think? Should we take this demon’s ‘deal’?”

And Ariadne put one finger on her lower lip and pretended to think about that.

And perhaps, in another universe, the offer might have been tempting. Calculated non-interference, perhaps even a willingness to lend a hand where needed. As another movie would put it, only a couple short years on, it could have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In this universe, however, Ariadne knew a thing or two about angels and demons. And one was that they were like ants. One might not seem like a problem. But that one would soon bring friends, and before you knew it, half your food was gone and the picnic was ruined.

Hollywood was the best picnic they’d had in a while. Ariadne would not let it be ruined.

So, in the manner of the audiences at the old arenas, she stuck her hand out, thumb parallel with the ground … and turned it down, down, down.

Dionysus grinned. In the surreal faux-light of his Prescence, his teeth looked longer and a touch sharper than usual. He shrugged, and the perfectly respectable stagehand’s clothes he had been wearing shifted to a leopard skin that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Tarzan set.

“Ariadne’s not interested,” Dionysus said. He shrugged again, and the leopard spots rippled and shifted, spreading from his chlamys to the rest of him. “Which is bad news for you, my friend.”

The demon gulped audibly.

And then—

Well.

That demon certainly wouldn’t be bothering them for at least a decade or two.

* * *

It wasn’t until much later, when the mortals had all gone to bed and Ariadne and Dionysus were examining the day’s footage in an editing room no one knew they were using, that they realized the limits of Ariadne’s nothing-to-see-here bubble.

Specifically, it didn’t work on cameras.

“Is that …” Dionysus said, leaning forward and squinting at the screen.

“Oh, dear,” Ariadne murmured, wincing as Dionysus in leopard-shape leapt forward and the demon—well. “That is not appropriate for a family film.”

And Dionysus cringed. “But that’s the best take we have!”

“The best take we have cannot include a demon going _splat_!”

“Says who?”

“Says me!”

Dionysus glared. Ariadne glared back. Neither blinked.[14]

Until Ariadne sighed and turned back to the screen. She crossed her arms, drummed her fingers on her bicep, and thought.

Perhaps a bit of … magical film splicing wouldn’t be quite out of the question … some of the other takes had gotten some excellent footage of the emus and ostriches wandering around the set …

Ariadne gestured, and the scene before them shifted. It was true that you could still see the demon tied to the tree if you squinted, and perhaps if you were squinting that hard, the demon might look like … well … something _also_ not appropriate for a family film, but …

“It’ll do,” Dionysus declared.

“It’ll do,” Ariadne agreed, leaning against him. Dionysus slipped an arm around her waist.

“Do you think we’ll see more demons around anytime soon?” she asked.

“If we do …” Dionysus mused.

And grinned.

“Well. We’ll just have to make sure they don’t stick around for long, won’t we?”

Ariadne chuckled. “That we will.” And nuzzled Dionysus. “That we will indeed.” 

* * *

[1] One hoped. Really it depended on how stingy the producers were feeling that week.

[2] The lights had to be brighter than daylight for filming. Sunglasses were a necessary shield, and since she was never on camera, nobody cared if she wore them.

[3] The show had to go on, after all. It would take more than swapping a live audience for cameras to change _that_.

[4] Literally.

[5] Though, to be fair, in those days religion and politics had been more closely joined at the hip than conjoined twins – or Apollo and Artemis, for that matter.

[6] Like Versailles.

[7] Much as it might feel otherwise at times.

[8] Black, because that seemed to be the sole color in the demon’s wardrobe, and bowler hats, because they were wearing three of them.

[9] And to make sure that filming wasn’t interrupted. The show had to go on, after all.

[10] Which was really quite good, given that this was _Dionysus_.

[11] “Who?”

[12] And, to judge by the sudden increase in smell, may well have been pants-wettingly terrified.

[13] At least Ariadne _thought_ that Lucifer – or was it Satan? – was one of the two principle deities of the Abrahamic faiths. It really didn’t help that the Abrahamic mortals themselves could never seem to agree on how many deities they had – even though they all, confusingly, insisted there was only one.

[14] Literally. Between Dionysus’s feline tendencies and Ariadne’s own questionable relationship to human biology, both could go quite some time without blinking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Tags to Mind**
> 
> **Implied/Referenced Violence & Minor Violence**: Dionysus shapeshifts into a leopard, and the demon isn't too pleased with that. The scene cuts out/fades to black and opens back up with Ariadne and Dionysus looking over the day's footage. Ariadne's don't-notice-us bubble didn't work on the cameras, so the footage caught exactly what Dionysus did to the demon. Ariadne says that the footage is not appropriate for a family film; Dionysus protests because it's the best version of the scene they have. 
> 
> If this is going to bother you, you'll want to skip at "Dionysus grinned. In the surreal faux-light of his Prescence, his teeth looked longer and a touch sharper than usual." and start back up again at "Says who?"
> 
> **Fun Stuff**
> 
> So, poisoning actors via makeup, setting people on fire, and grossly underpaying actors all sounds like prime demonic work, right? Not possible in the real world?
> 
> THINK AGAIN!
> 
> All of that stuff _actually happened_ during the making of _The Wizard of Oz_.
> 
> The first Tin Man (Buddy Ebsen) actually WAS poisoned by his own makeup and spent weeks in an oxygen tent.
> 
> The lights really WERE hotter than hell.
> 
> Margaret Hamilton (the actress who played the Wicked Witch of the West) actually DID catch fire during the exit from Munchkinland. When she finally got back to set, she refused to do another scene involving fire ... so her stuntwoman (Betty Danko) did it instead, and SHE caught fire.
> 
> Everybody really WAS underpaid, and of the 10 major cast members, Judy Garland made the least ... except for the dog.
> 
> Judy Garland was also given drugs to "help" her keep up with the pace of film-making.
> 
> Ostriches and emus really WERE wandering the set.
> 
> And for the (to borrow a theater term) blocking of the scene where Dionysus and Ariadne confront the demon, I took inspiration from an urban legend about the film. I don't want to go into detail for fear of triggering anyone, as the urban legend involves suicide, but Google "urban legend wizard of oz munchkin" and you'll find it. Note that the legend is NOT TRUE.
> 
> Aaaand there was a bunch of other horrible stuff that went wrong that I didn't even bring up here because I couldn't find a way to blame it on the demon. But that only makes sense, because as Crowley would point out, humans at their worst can out-demon demons at their best any day of the week.
> 
> So, yeah. _The Wizard of Oz_ , one of the world's most beloved family films, was apparently a never-ending nightmare to film. Who'd've thunk?


	5. Songs About Rainbows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the eve of the Olympics, a young wizard escapes from his bed ... and briefly mistakes Ariadne for his nanny.

_Circa 2012 A.D._

_American Embassy, London_

As Ariadne sipped her glass of wine and pretended to listen to yet another speech on the virtues of FREEDOM,[1] apple pie, and the noble goal of taking home more gold medals than any other country, she took a moment to reflect that mortals really didn’t change.

Oh, the _trappings_ changed. For all that Western architecture had never quite managed to let go of how the Greeks and Romans had built things, the people she’d known on Crete would have surely lost track of their jaws if they’d gotten a look at this place. And the clothes – nobody in Greece would have been caught dead in a tux in the middle of summer. And the language, which they would have written off as the worst the barbarians had come up with yet.

But strip away the trappings, and what you had was a group of self-important men (and some women, in this relatively enlightened age) all pontificating about Virtue and Value and Truth while _really_ making it all about themselves. There was an audience to the pontification, smiling politely and clapping at all the appropriate lines. An underpaid staff distributing beverages and nibbles. And the gathering was in honor of the _Olympics_ , which, true, had changed a great deal from their glory days, but at their heart were still what they always were: an excuse to gather a large number of people from all corners of the known world, watch them perform athletic feats the average person couldn’t dream of doing, and have one hell of a party.

And in the back of the American embassy ballroom – or in the women’s dining chamber, ostensibly acting as hostess – there was Ariadne.[2] Nursing her wine and wondering when the speaking would be over so something fun could be begin.

So strong was the sense of _I’ve been here before_ that when a small weight collided with the back of her legs, crying, “Nanny!” the first word out of Ariadne’s mouth was very nearly, _Phaedra?_

But it couldn’t be Phaedra – even if Phaedra used to do _exactly that_ when she escaped the nursery, even if “Nanny” wasn’t too far off from what she called Ariadne when her baby lisp wasn’t quite up to tackling the four whole syllables that made up Ariadne’s name. Phaedra had been gone for so, so long. And it had been even longer since she’d been little.

Ariadne still turned and looked, though. Because it took more than time and distance and even death to kill some instincts. “… Hello?”

She found herself staring into the face of a tousle-haired boy. He was wearing Kermit the Frog pajamas and couldn’t have been more than four.

He was also staring up at Ariadne with an expression just shy of heartbroken. “You’re not Nanny.”

It was that glassy-eyed look, more than anything, that led Ariadne to wave her wineglass into the ether[3] and crouch at the little boy’s level. Another wave ensured they wouldn’t be disturbed. “No, I’m not,” she admitted. “But maybe I can still help you. What’s wrong?”

The little boy pouted. “Nanny’s not here.” Before Ariadne could wonder if there had perhaps been some staff changes at the embassy, the little boy went on, “She’s on _holiday_.”

Ariadne blinked a little at the British-ism – the boy’s accent was mostly American – but before she could do more than that, the boy went on, “An’ so is Brother Francis. But not together. ‘Cause that wouldn’t be,” his face screwed up like he was repeating a word that, no matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t understand, “proper.”

Ariadne did not let her eyebrows arch; the quickest way to lose a little kid’s trust was to admit that you didn’t have the least idea what they were talking about – unless you could manage to do so in a way that made the little one feel smart and important. So Ariadne let the bits about Brother Francis and propriety wash over her, focusing instead on the important bit. “But if they’re on holiday, that means they’ll come back soon, doesn’t it?”

“No,” the little boy sighed. “Not for ages ‘n ages. A whole _week_.”

“A whole week,” Ariadne repeated, solemnly nodding her head. A week was usually a pretty stingy amount of vacation time in this neck of the woods, but given that this was the _American_ embassy, a week sounded quite generous. “You must be very lonely, then.”

The little boy nodded, eyes huge and dark and sad, and _that_ was what decided Ariadne. The sane, responsible, adult thing to do would have been to flag down one of the embassy staff and return this boy back to his caretakers … and that was not what she was going to do. Not until she’d made him smile. Or at least helped him to sleep, since it had to be well past his bedtime.

“Well, you want to know a secret?” Ariadne asked.

The little boy cocked his head to one side.

“Sometimes I feel very lonely, too. But,” Ariadne said as the little boy’s eyes widened, “you know what I’ve found out makes me feel less lonely?”

As she’d hoped, the boy shook his head.

“Being with someone else who’s lonely,” Ariadne said, leaning close and letting her eyes widen with mischief. “Because it starts out as two people deciding to be lonely together, and you know what happens next? Suddenly – neither of us is lonely anymore!”

And just like that, the little boy smiled.

“So …” Ariadne stuck out her hand. “Want to try it?”

The little boy beamed, and nodded, and took her hand without a care in the world.

“Come on,” Ariadne said, getting up but still holding onto the boy’s hand. “Let’s go outside.”

“It’s dark outside,” the boy noted.

“It is,” Ariadne agreed, “but don’t worry, I won’t let any scary monsters eat you.”

The boy snorted. “Nanny says I’m the scariest monster in the garden.” He paused for a moment, little face screwing up in thought. “An’ Brother Francis says she’s not wrong.”

“Does he, now?” Ariadne asked.

“Uh-huh,” the little boy said as they slipped out a pair of double doors leading to the garden terrace. “Hey … what’s your name?”

Ariadne pondered the odds of a child this little managing to not mangle _Ariadne_ and decided not to risk it. “My friends call me Ari. What’s your name?”

“Warlock Dowling,” the little boy said, and Ariadne was grateful it was now too dark for the boy to see her face, because she never could have kept it straight. “An’ my daddy’s very important. Nanny says so.”

Ariadne wondered how much this boy’s parents were paying Nanny to say that, and if that time might have been better spent teaching little Warlock about stranger danger. Ariadne could have smuggled him off the embassy grounds and composed an entire magazine-cutout ransom note in the time they’d been talking. And it would probably be a ransom note, not … anything else. The name “Dowling” had been on the invitations to this fancy soiree. So if anyone had found out she’d absconded with the youngest Dowling scion …

Well, it was a lucky thing that Ariadne didn’t have to deal with security guards with semiautomatic weapons unless she wanted to. For her and for Warlock.

They wandered through the embassy gardens, Warlock chattering enough for the two of them – mostly about Nanny and Brother Francis, the things they said and the things they did – and Ariadne nodding intelligently. When they ventured too far away from the bright lights of the embassy, Ariadne summoned a small light-bubble to keep them from tripping over any sprinkler heads or humorous[4] garden statues. Warlock looked up at the light and barely blinked, which was … interesting. Most children his age would question overt magic just a little bit, but perhaps Warlock was more trusting or imaginative than most.

Still, even a preschooler’s up-past-bedtime energy couldn’t last forever, and when Warlock stumbled over his own two feet for the second time, Ariadne picked him up – he didn’t resist – and put him on her hip.

“All right, little wizard,” she said, “I think it’s time for you to go night-night.”

“I’m not sleepy,” Warlock lied, yawning and nuzzling against her shoulder. “An’ Nanny’s not here to,” he yawned again, “sing me to sleep.”

“Well, what if I tried singing you to sleep?”

“Hmmmm …” Warlock mused. “I dunno. You’re not Nanny.”

“So? I bet I’ve been singing little ones to sleep longer than Nanny has.”

“Nah. Nanny’s older than you.”

“You sure?” Ariadne playfully raised an eyebrow. “How old is Nanny?”

“Nanny says she’s older than dirt.”

Oh, so Nanny was one of those types? Ariadne wondered if she could possibly finagle meeting her; the woman sounded like a hoot. And … concerning, since based on Warlock’s chatter, she and this Brother Francis were the only ones to pay attention to the little one at all. What exactly were his “very important” father and (presumably, somewhere, biological if nothing else) mother doing that was so important that their son barely seemed to register them?

But that was a problem for another time, and right now, little Warlock deserved an answer. “All right,” Ariadne gave in, or pretended to. “Maybe she is older than me. The dirt was _definitely_ here before I was.”

“Told ya so,” Warlock said, smugly snuggling against her.

“Yes, you did. So. Will you let me try to sing you to sleep?”

“I _guess_ ,” Warlock said, as if he was making some grand concession, and yawned again.

Ariadne smiled – and immediately ran headfirst into a conundrum, because as luck would have it, every lullaby that came to mind was one she’d either had sung to her or had sung in turn to Phaedra. And singing in a language even the dustiest scholars could no longer interpret was not the way to go.

Then Ariadne got a second look at Warlock’s pajamas and had an idea.

“ _Why are there so many songs about rainbows_ —” she started.

“Nanny doesn’t _like_ rainbows,” Warlock pouted.

For a minute, Ariadne blinked. What sort of person didn’t like _rainbows_? _Oh—right—raging homophobes._ Maybe she didn’t want to meet this woman after all.

“But Brother Francis does,” Warlock went on, quietly, as if this had just occurred to him.

“Then will you let me sing this song for him?” Ariadne asked.

Warlock gave that idea due consideration before nodding and snuggling closer.

Ariadne started again. “ _Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what’s on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions. Rainbows have nothing to hide …_ ”

Ariadne was able to get through the rest of the first verse without further comment, and when she got to the second, all Warlock said was, “Nanny _likes_ stars,” before settling back against Ariadne’s shoulder. Or at least that was what she thought he said. It was too slurred and drowsy for her to be entirely sure.

By the third verse, however, he wasn’t saying anything – his breathing was too deep and even for that. And by the end of the song (which Ariadne perhaps extended by adding “la dee da dees” that Kenny Ascher and Paul Hamilton Williams never penned), he was out like a light.

Satisfied that he’d stay asleep until morning – and sending a bit of magic his way to be sure – Ariadne returned to the ballroom.

Where she was almost immediately greeted by Dionysus. Who stared at the child in her arms, looked into his glass, and looked back at Warlock. And blinked. “When did we acquire a kid?”

“ _We_ didn’t acquire anything. _You_ ditched me to hang out with your brother, and this little boy found me.”

Dionysus replied with a sigh and a tension around the shoulders, which told Ariadne everything she needed to know about what Hermes’s motives had been for pulling Dionysus away. She should have known better, really. If Hermes only wanted to avoid boring speeches, he would have invited her along.

Well, she’d make it up to both of them later.

“However,” she went on, “we can certainly un-acquire this little fellow if you happen to have found any frantic staff members looking for him – or, Gaia willing, his _parents_. Although if we don’t … we’re keeping him.”

Now Dionysus blinked. “Wait. What? Why are we keeping him?”

“Look at him, Dionysus,” Ariadne said, shifting so Dionysus could get a better look at the sleeping boy. “He can’t be more than four. And I think he’s the son of someone important here. And if he’s to be believed, nobody pays him the least bit of attention but the nanny and … I think the gardener? Who are both on vacation.” Ariadne raised an eyebrow.

Dionysus took a deep breath, the tension in his shoulders growing. If Ariadne could have spared a hand, she would have rubbed his back. Whatever else she’d had to put up with as a child, at least she’d always had a mother and other caretakers who loved her. And none of them had fallen victim to a spell of Hera’s vindictiveness.

But Dionysus did nod, because—well. His mother may have loved him, and so had his caretakers. But none of them had lasted long against Hera’s vindictiveness.

And to be completely truthful, this wouldn’t be the first time they ended up playing Peter Pan and Wendy to a poor lost boy.[5] Usually the lost children in question were three or more times Warlock’s age, but they could certainly improvise with a younger child. Dionysus would probably quite enjoy showing up to PTA meetings blitzed out of his mind.

But the Dowlings and their staff could yet prove themselves to be worthy of Warlock. Dionysus looked around the room, and so did Ariadne, and Dionysus was the one who nudged Ariadne and pointed to a woman in a dark uniform hurrying through the ballroom, looking under every table and behind every pillar with growing desperation.

Ariadne and Dionysus exchanged glances, and with a nod, Ariadne dispelled the magic that had kept the mortals at bay. She and Dionysus walked closer, and when the woman saw them – and Warlock – she let out a cry of relief that was almost a sob.

“Looking for something?” Ariadne asked, not that she _had_ to, with the way the woman practically ran over to them and plucked Warlock from her arms.

“Thank the Lord, you _found_ him!” she said, holding the little one close. “Oh, I was _so_ worried! I went to get the little mite a glass of water, and when I came back, he was gone!” The woman patted Warlock’s back, not that he stirred a bit. “How did you find him, can I ask?”

Dionysus opened his mouth and shut it again. Luckily, Ariadne had an answer at the ready. “He found me, really. Ran right up and called me Nanny.”

“Na—” the woman started, then blinked and blinked again. “Oh, your _hair_ ,” she said. “Nanny—that is—Miss Ashtoreth has hair very like yours. I suppose little Warlock saw it, and …” She shrugged and shifted Warlock a little higher in her hold. “He loves his nanny, does our Warlock. Between you and me, Miss Ashtoreth can’t come back from holiday fast enough!”

“Well, he’s safe and sound now. And asleep,” Ariadne said, reaching out to stroke the little boy’s back one last time.

“Yes—and I should probably get him to bed before …” The woman looked sidelong at the area where the snootiest dignitaries had gathered. “… Right. Thank you again, _really_!” And with that, the woman adjusted Warlock in her hold once again and hurried out of the ballroom.

With Warlock and his erstwhile caretaker gone, Ariadne and Dionysus shifted, moving closer to each other like two magnets coming into alignment. Dionysus put an arm around her waist, and Ariadne leaned her head on his shoulder.

“Are you sure we won’t have to acquire that little guy and smuggle him back home?” Dionysus asked.

“Hmm …” Ariadne closed her eyes and stretched out with her senses, finding the little boy’s essence, and …

Yes. There was a warm/soft/cozy feel surrounding him, accompanied by a sharp/fierce/protective one. And underneath both, a sense of bone-deep sorrow that Ariadne might have been a bit nonplussed by, had Warlock not talked so extensively about Nanny and Brother Francis. As it was …

Well. Show Ariadne the caretaker who _didn’t_ feel that way toward the child in their care, and Ariadne would show you a caretaker who didn’t actually care at all.

“Yes,” Ariadne said. She opened her eyes and smiled up at Dionysus. “Even if it’s only by the nanny and the gardener … he’s loved.” 

* * *

[1] Given the speaker and the venue, the caps were unfortunately necessary.

[2] Although she did wonder where Dionysus had gotten off to. Hermes had “borrowed” him right before the speechifying had started, claiming they had something family-related to discuss. If Ariadne found out that they’d traipsed off to get drunk on the grounds and left her to deal with the speeches, she was going to murder the pair of them.

[3] The embassy staff wouldn’t miss it.

[4] Tasteless.

[5] Or girl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have "Rainbow Connection" stuck in your head for the rest of the night, congratulations! You have a beautiful song stuck in your head, and I have done my job.
> 
> (And tomorrow will be the exciting conclusion of this little tale! Wahooo!)


	6. Connecting the Dots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When all is said and all is done, it only takes a few stray remarks for dots several hundred years in the making to produce a curious picture.

_Circa 2019 A.D._

_Los Angeles, California_

Ariadne was being absolutely ridiculous, and worst of all, she _knew_ it.

She had picked up international travelers from LAX for as long as there had been an LAX. In the old days, before cellphones, the sensible thing was to hire a taxi or limo. If a personal pickup was necessary or desired, you gave it at least an hour after the scheduled time of arrival before you even drove out to the airport to account for flight delays, Customs, etc. And these days, you waited until you got a text from the person you were picking up to even leave the house, and then you waited in the cellphone lot until you got another text saying that they were through Customs and waiting at the curb.

Ariadne hadn’t done that. Well, no, that wasn’t true. She’d been sensible enough to wait to leave the house until after she’d gotten the text that the plane had touched down. She’d hoped that the traffic would kill some time.[1] But instead of waiting in the cellphone lot, like a sensible person, she’d parked the car in a short-term lot and parked herself right outside Customs.

But maybe it wasn’t as mad as it seemed. After all, it wasn’t like she was picking up Zeus and Hera or Persephone or a director or actor from the airport.

She was picking up _her parents_.

If Ariadne had been the type to chew her nails, they would have been gnawed down to the quick.

But there was no reason for her to be so nervous! Her parents had agreed to come out for Thanksgiving. They’d _wanted_ to come out for Thanksgiving! Despite what the evidence from her first thirty-eight-hundred-and-change years of life would suggest, her parents … actually seemed to like her.[2] And for the sake of her own sanity, the less she thought about the borderline-suicidal quest they and Dionysus (and some friends) had taken on to get her back after her discorporation, the better.

And yet. Here she was. In the airport. Pacing around like a caged lioness. If she hadn’t erected a bubble of nothing-to-see-here around her, she was sure she’d already be having a very uncomfortable conversation with the TSA.

For the millionth time, Ariadne pulled her phone out of her purse, double and triple-checking that she hadn’t missed a text—

“I swear to—to— _Someone_ , Crowley, I am never letting you pack your own bag again.”

They were here! In her haste to look up, Ariadne nearly dropped her phone.

And—there. Just coming out of Customs. Aziraphale, fussing as ever, carrying a—great Gaia, was that a _steamer trunk_? Ariadne hadn’t seen one of those in the wild for almost a century. And he was holding it by the top handle! Ariadne had always assumed those were just decorative; she’d never tried to lift one using it.

Meanwhile Crowley was by Aziraphale’s side, with only an overnight bag slung over his shoulder. The bag didn’t look big enough to hold more than a day’s worth of clothes, never mind enough for the week and change they were planning to stay.

As they walked/sauntered the rest of the way out of Customs, Crowley was smirking. Aziraphale was … not.

“What?” Crowley asked. “Can’t see what the problem is. You’re staying as a guest in someone’s house, you bring a gift, s’only polite.”

“A _red flower_? Even I thought it was an opium poppy at first!”

“That’s because you know me. And hey, at least this wasn’t as bad as the truffles and oregano incident.”

They hadn’t seen her yet. And based on the way Aziraphale was sighing, they might not see her for another minute. But Ariadne had some experience with sneaking things past Customs[3] and judged that she wasn’t going to get a better entry cue than this.

“You know, we have made weed legal in this state, even if the feds don’t agree,” she said, “but opiates are … a bit of a sore spot, all things considered.”

Crowley and Aziraphale jumped. Aziraphale was the first to recover. He beamed, dropped the steamer trunk,[4] rushed over to Ariadne and swept her up in a hug.

And that—that just wasn’t _fair_. Because if hugging were an Olympic sport, Aziraphale would walk away with the gold every four years, no contest. There was no defense against a hug like that, other than to hug back as hard as you could.

So Ariadne did.

And as she did, relief washed over her – because now it was obvious that the affection she’d been given over the summer wasn’t just a fluke or adrenaline left over from the botched apocalypse and everything that happened after. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d feared that until the fear went away.

But maybe it wasn’t that surprising that she’d be afraid. After all, she’d felt a father’s love go sour before.

Ariadne decided she wasn’t going to think about that anymore, so she closed her eyes and surrendered to the tight hug. And she studiously ignored the telltale _click_ of a cellphone camera capturing an image that was sure to be used to embarrass her later.

When they pulled away – Ariadne wasn’t quite sure whose idea it was – Aziraphale’s eyes were crinkled in faint concern. But his tone was jovial as ever when he asked, “And how are you, dear girl?”

“Fine! Fine, great! Even. Um. How was the flight?” Ariadne asked, because that was the sort of thing one asked when greeting people who had just gotten off a plane.

“Oh, fine, perfectly lovely—”

“Terrible.”

Aziraphale glared at Crowley. Crowley grinned.

“You slept through the whole thing,” Aziraphale accused.

“It was a terrible sleep. They don’t make airline seats to fit people with actual legs or any body fat whatsoever.”

“I happen to have both, and _I_ was perfectly comfortable.”

“ _You_ cheated.”

Aziraphale and Crowley glared at each other for a moment – or at least Ariadne thought that was a glare behind Crowley’s sunglasses – before Aziraphale broke and smiled. “Anyway. That was our flight. And the less said about Customs,” that was another glare at Crowley, “the better.”

“I heard a bit about Customs. No _poppies_ for me?” On _poppies_ , she cackled like Margaret Hamilton.

Crowley laughed; even Aziraphale smiled – good, he must have seen that movie. Ariadne wasn’t sure who was alive in 2019 who hadn’t, but Aziraphale seemed to avoid most of cinema with the intensity of someone with a deadly peanut allergy avoiding Reese’s cups.

“Not today, no,” Crowley said, ducking in for a quick hug around the shoulders – there-and-gone, contact that barely merited the name. But it was fine. It was enough and more than enough.

“Come on,” Ariadne said, nodding toward the doors, “I’m in short-term parking. The walk isn’t far. Do you need help with …” Ariadne gestured to Aziraphale’s steamer trunk, which she knew she would in no way be able to pick up without magic.

“Oh, not at all!” Aziraphale said, lifting the trunk as if it weighed no more than Crowley’s overnight bag. As they set off, Ariadne in between the two of them, he asked, “You never mentioned – did you have anything to do with that film? Er, _The Wizard of Oz_?”

Ariadne laughed. “Did we! We were on set practically every day. And it _still_ was cursed – although things did get better when Dionysus chased that de—”

Ariadne trailed off and stopped dead, memories she hadn’t thought about in decades bubbling to the surface and several pieces clicking into place. “That demon thought I was _you_!” she said, rounding on Crowley.

“What?” Crowley asked.

“What?!” Aziraphale said in some alarm.

“There was—there was a demon. On the set. Causing problems on purpose. They—they said they were trying to get one of the studio heads or execs – I don’t even _remember_ who – to sign a contract selling their soul to, um …” Ariadne decided not to risk saying the name aloud and instead just pointed down.

Crowley rolled his entire head. “Waste of bloody time, that.”

“Yeah, that’s what Dionysus and I tried to tell them, but—but the _point_ is, when we first caught up with the demon, they called me—”

Ariadne stopped abruptly, remembering the videos from Hell and just how Crowley had reacted to being called that name.

“Called you what?” Crowley asked.

She _could_ just lie—except … she doubted she’d be believed.

“Crawly,” Ariadne admitted, and then, before Crowley could react (badly), she added, “I, um, I was wearing sunglasses, and … well, you know.” Ariadne reached up and pulled at a curl. “So, easy mistake to make, I guess?”

Crowley’s face was absolutely blank for a moment, and Ariadne found herself wishing he hadn’t been wearing sunglasses.

Then Crowley threw back his head and laughed.

“ _Crowley_!” Aziraphale said. “That’s not—that’s not funny.” And even though they hadn’t left the air-conditioned terminal yet, he fished out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. “If anyone had—had figured out before …” He shuddered. “Did—did you run into angels and demons often? Before …?”

“Um …” Ariadne hesitated; after so many years, did it really matter? But … maybe that was why it was better to tell. Because it really didn’t matter, and maybe—maybe the day when they could all look back on this and laugh would come sooner if she dredged a few memories into the sunlight.

Of course, to do that, she’d have to actually _remember_ them …

“Um—well, there was that one angel in upstate New York, about—early-to-mid-nineteenth century, I think? He wasn’t so bad, though—” Ariadne started.

“Wait, wait. There were _actual_ angels running around New York then?” Crowley asked. “Aziraphale! Why didn’t you tell me that …”

Crowley trailed off, and when Ariadne glanced in Aziraphale’s direction, she saw why. Aziraphale had turned a rather alarming shade of pale.

“That—that angel,” he croaked, “I don’t suppose—he mentioned his name?”

“Not—not his _name_ ,” Ariadne said. “He told us to call him Ezekiel Harold, though.”

If anything, Aziraphale turned even paler.

“You knew the guy, I take it?” Crowley asked with a sort of studied nonchalance that was obviously a mask for something that was very much not nonchalant.

“I—if—if it’s the same person I’m thinking of—there was an angel in my old platoon; he was sent to Earth about—oh, goodness, must have been the seventeenth century. He looked me up in London and I helped him come up with an alias and—and just try to blend in among humans, really. I know he went over to America not long after, with the Puritans, I _think_ he ended up in New York before he was recalled.”

More memories bubbled to the surface; more pieces dropped into place. “Did you give him wine?”

Aziraphale looked at her like she’d asked if the sky was blue or if water was wet. “Of course!”

“… I think I reminded him of you. Um. You know.” Ariadne gestured to her face. “Family resemblance.”

Aziraphale right now resembled a snowbank more than an angel, or her for that matter, so Ariadne judged a swift change of subject was in order. “And you!” she said, turning to Crowley. “I don’t suppose you had any imitators running around Versailles in the 1740s? There was a demon there that got me into all kinds of trouble with Aphrodite—”

She stopped, because Crowley’s jaw had fallen. “The 1740s?” Crowley asked.

And Ariadne remembered the name of the demon who had inadvertently aroused Aphrodite’s ire against her. Madame de Corbeau. Mrs. _Crow_.

“You were causing trouble in Versailles in 1740s in drag?” Ariadne asked.

“In—I was not in drag! I was a woman at the time!” Crowley replied. “I was there for—oh, some _complete_ waste of time of a temptation. All I remember is that nobody _mentioned_ that Aphrodite had decided to make the place home sweet home before I saw her barreling down on me, looking like she’d like to turn me into a Medusa.”

Ariadne decided now was not the time to mention that Athena had been the one responsible for poor Medusa’s eternal bad hair day. And given how Aziraphale had gone, against all laws of biology, even paler, now was not the time to mention the angel who had attempted to turn Versailles toward Heaven.

“Look,” Ariadne said, hooking her arm through Aziraphale’s, “so we—we had a few close calls over the years. So what? We could have gotten discovered; we didn’t; and when we did—well, we did all survive. Somehow. And—and let’s face it, given how much time Dionysus and I have spent in London over the years, it’s a miracle we didn’t run into each other sooner. But—but London’s a big city, and it’s not like you two were hanging out at the American embassy or the Globe—”

_Wait,_ Ariadne thought, remembering a quite literal run-in at the Globe – with a richly dressed stranger with pale blond hair and _very_ blue eyes—and to judge by the way Aziraphale’s eyes had widened, he was remembering the same thing—

“Wait,” Crowley said, “the American embassy? _When_?”

Ariadne turned back to him and remembered a little boy who’d grabbed her legs from behind and called her Nanny. And an embassy staffer who had seemed quite mystified until she looked at Ariadne’s hair.

So Ariadne didn’t answer, not directly. Instead, she sang, “ _Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection_ —”

“Oh, _Somebody_ give me strength,” Crowley groaned. “That was _you_ who taught him that song? He wouldn’t stop singing it for a week!”

“How,” Aziraphale asked, voice a little shaken, “how on _earth_ did we not get discovered before—before we did?”

Ariadne turned back to him, and—well. That _was_ the question, wasn’t it?

And though Hamlet had made that observation four hundred years ago and more, she still didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “But you know what?”

She tucked Aziraphale’s arm more closely through hers and reached for Crowley’s as well, whether he wanted it or not. “It really doesn’t matter, not now. So—I’m just going to be grateful that it all worked out the way it did and get on with my life. With _our_ lives. Now let’s go; before Dionysus starts wondering if you two got shipped off to Guantanamo Bay.”

And brooking no further argument, Ariadne marched them through the big double doors and into the bright Los Angeles sunshine.

They were here now, all together and safe or close enough, and it was time to make up for lost time.

* * *

[1] It hadn’t. There hadn’t _been_ traffic. In LA. In the middle of the day. Ariadne hadn’t meant to do that and really wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed it.

[2] Said evidence consisting of their absence without so much as a cryptic note or token left behind.

[3] Dionysus often chose to view international travel as a chance to match wits with the Forces of Stuck-in-the-Mud.

[4] Which did not so much thud when it hit the ground as boom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Kat_Rowe for the idea of a truffles-and-oregano incident. Crowley probably lists "Trolling Customs" as a skill on his demonic CV, and she came up with that particular example.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this! Comments give me LIFE, so don't be shy! If you spot any typos or grammatical mix-ups or something confuses you, please give me a shout-out so I can either explain or fix it. Same thing if you think I should add a tag. If you disagree with my characterization or plot choices ... please have a lovely day and go read something you like better.
> 
> If you'd like to chat more, please come talk to me on [Tumblr](https://morgaine2005.tumblr.com/)! Or look me up through Discord. Same username!


End file.
